The SINE
workshop, hosted by the Partnership for Biodiversity Informatics (PBI),
will assemble research scientists, directors of field stations and marine
laboratories, as well as experts in computational and information sciences
to discuss the technical requirements for building local, regional,
and national-level networks designed to deliver continuous, integrated
high-quality data in real or near real time. Each of these audiences
will contribute to and learn from the information exchange. Scientists
will share their experiences in expanding site-specific science to broader
spatial scales, and will discuss future information infrastructure needs
in light of new sensors (field and satellite) and data collection capabilities.
Directors of field stations and marine laboratories will ground the
workshop in the present-day realities of existing infrastructure and
capabilities, and will contribute to a new vision of how field stations
and marine laboratories can expand to meet the needs for a national
capability for observing and understanding environmental complexity.
Computational and information scientists will present state of the art
developments in sensor technologies, networking, information delivery,
and knowledge generation.

Workshop
presentations, discussion, and working group sessions will focus on
three topics:

As environmental
research becomes more complex and multidisciplinary, gains in our understanding
of ecosystem biocomplexity can be furthered through the application
of technologies that improve data management and delivery; enhance modeling
and prediction capabilities; and facilitate communication among individuals,
environmental sensors, computers, and databases. This workshop will
be the first attempt to envision a scalable national environmental information
infrastructure that meets the needs of scientists working at local and
broader sales, as well as decision-makers and educators that may require
information at regional to national scales. Consequently, the discussions
and working group reports are anticipated to be of broad interest to
many disciplines. To meet this information need, several means will
be used to disseminate the workshop products to the broader community
including:

A webcast
and web archive of the presentations

A white
paper of the proceedings and recommendations which will be posted
online